Marsh Hawk Review is an online poetry journal sponsored by the Marsh Hawk Press collective. Marsh Hawk Review will appear twice a year, under the revolving editorship of collective members. Each issue will offer a selection of poems solicited by the editor, in addition to new work posted by poets in the collective.

Monday, March 7, 2011

MARK LAMOREAUX

I AM THE HALO THAT HOVERS ABOVE THE HEAD OF PAUL DELAROCHE’S “YOUNG MARTYR” LIKE A FLYING SAUCER

She, a pool of milk lapped by God. I hover above her, a holethrough which same regardsthe still milky face, unaligned with its tilt where water has offered her bright neck to the air,the hand of that same invisible.What cradles also fills lungs & the caverns of the ears, a silencethat has spoken a few sibilantsyllables to her floating just like a bather or a dream of travelunder bridges that join those two lands, where we are going& from whence we came. Those 2lands which echo each other;the spanner is the loopof me, joined end to end. I amthe map of the only route, the onlyavailable road.

I light the water like the sheen of a little yellow moon, the arcof a hot point traced on the eyelid,shimmering there among the popping cells, an orifice through which those last breaths alight, an invisible tunnel to the foyer underthe river. I am the clasp of alpha& omega, a sacred last letter. O undulant breast of fluid, O palediaphanous shroud as though formedof the curled ripped canvasof the bulbs of lilies in the river.The last hat, I prefigure wings. The sign of the death of the good or merely innocent, I am the crown of what is called & what calls. What calls to the air,I am the open mouth of.

Opponent of the bound X of wrists,I float at the behest of the spread armsin the shadows, unperturbed bywind or shadow, I hang like the weatherover or upon her, waiting to be breathed in by the unquickened. The second courseof the repast of rivers, through the deeps &the shallows, shooting toward that delta & that deeper, greener sea where I will remain, never touching, never lifting,never parting as the cage of flesh begins to dance, so slowly among the slowerocean plants, a glimmer of what we reckonmay be, but will never see except amongthe wraith-glow of the strange fisheswho populate that tunnel of our lastsubmergence, that circular gate & the brilliance beyond that seeps through the hinge & forms the hoop of me.